Countries offering a helping hand

Tuesday

Jun 6, 2006 at 12:01 AM

BY GIOVANNA DELL'ORTOASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ATLANTA - Ryan Kittle and his wife were on the porch of their hurricane-flooded Mississippi home last September when they saw a van draped with the Union Jack make its way through the downed trees.
"My wife said, joking, 'It's for you' - and they were!" the 24-year-old from Plymouth, England, recalled in a combination Southern drawl and British accent.
Kittle's father back in England had been unable to contact him after Hurricane Katrina and desperately called an emergency hot line set up by the Foreign Office in London. British consular officials from Atlanta then drove out to search for Kittle and dozens of other British subjects reported missing after the hurricane.
Now, at the start of another hurricane season, foreign governments are compiling the names and addresses of their citizens living in the Southeastern United States in case their loved ones back home need to reach them after another disaster.
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners - many of them from Mexico, but also from countries such as England, Germany, France and Italy - are believed to be living in the nation's Hurricane Alley.
In the aftermath of Katrina, consular officials from Atlanta went knocking on doors along the Gulf Coast in search of foreigners whose worried relatives back home were unable to contact them.
"We went block by block, looking for people who looked Latino. We asked them if they were Mexican, if they needed anything and if they knew where other Mexicans were," said Remedios Gomez-Arnau, the Mexican consul general in Atlanta, who opened a temporary consulate in Mobile, Ala., in the days after Katrina.
In a few cases, some foreigners who were hurt or had lost everything were sent back to their home countries by their consulates. Among them was a Frenchman who was returned to Paris after his restaurant in Gulfport, Miss., was wiped out, said French vice consul Aurelien Maillet.
The goal of the foreign governments is not to deliver food, water or other emergency supplies, but to offer the comfort of knowing someone back home cares.